Court Backs Away From Begay

Is the Begay revolution over?  In its 2008 decision in Begay v. United States, the Supreme Court adopted a narrow construction of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s “residual clause,” limiting the ACCA’s reach to convictions for “purposeful, violent, and aggressive” crimes.  (For background, see this post.)  The following year, in Chambers v. United States, the Court again pared back the residual clause, emphasizing the need to demonstrate the objective dangerousness of an offense for it to count as a trigger for the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence.

What many observers took from Begay and Chambers is that a prior conviction does not count under the ACCA unless it satisfies both a subjective test (purposeful, violent, and aggressive) and an objective test (statistically demonstrated likelihood of injury).

But, today, in Sykes v. United States (No. 09-11311), the Court threw this understanding into doubt, suggesting a considerably more expansive interpretation of the residual clause.

Continue ReadingCourt Backs Away From Begay

SCOTUS to Rule on Right to Counsel in Collateral Proceedings

Although the Supreme Court has long recognized that defendants have a right to counsel at the first level of direct appeal, the Court has thus far declined to extend this right to collateral post-conviction proceedings, such as habeas corpus.  Earlier this week, however, the Court agreed to hear a case that will test how firm the distinction really is.  Martinez v. Ryan (No. 10-1001) involves a state-court defendant’s attempt to litigate a claim in collateral proceedings that he was prohibited from raising on direct appeal.  If he has no right to counsel in his collateral proceeding, then he has no right to counsel at all as to this issue.

Here’s what happened.

Continue ReadingSCOTUS to Rule on Right to Counsel in Collateral Proceedings

SCOTUS Rules That Current Penalties Do Not Govern Whether Prior Conviction Is ACCA Predicate

I continue to be mystified by the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the Armed Career Criminal Act.  The Court has been remarkably active in taking ACCA cases in recent years, but I’m hard-pressed to see much coherence in the outcomes.  On the one hand, there is the Begay line of cases, which have substantially narrowed the definition of “violent felonies” that can be used as a predicate for the ACCA fifteen-year mandatory minimum.  (For background, see my post here.)  Yet, there are plenty of other ACCA cases – many involving short, unanimous decisions, as if the underlying legal issues were entirely unproblematic  – that adopt unnecessarily expansive interpretations of the ACCA triggering language.

Count the Court’s decision today in McNeill v. United States (No. 10-5258) in the latter category.

Here’s the background on McNeill from an earlier post:

Continue ReadingSCOTUS Rules That Current Penalties Do Not Govern Whether Prior Conviction Is ACCA Predicate